There are many interesting places to discover, visit and explore in Vilhelmina municipality. This brochure is about the town of Vilhelmina itself. There are two other brochures which describe outings and sights in the Kultsjรถ and Vojmรฅ river valleys.
We wish you a pleasant trip!
VILHELMINA MUNICIPALITY
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CONTENTS Courthouse/ Tourist Office
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2 2 Arresten (Lock-up) n
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3 3 Inlandsbanan (Inland Railway) n
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4 4 Vilhelmina’s first church n
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5 5 Hillbert Hellgren’s horseshoe n
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6 8 Galgbacken (Gallows Hill) n
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Memorial Stone
8 8 Folkets hus (Community Centre) n
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9 9 Stenmans (Café) n
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10 0 Volgsjö School n
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11 1 School Park n
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12 2 Vilhelmina ”church town” n
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13 3 Vilhelmina Museum n
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Vilhelmina Church
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Sami Settlement/Samiesijte
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Sagostigen (Enchanted Path)
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Strandpromenaden (Lakeside Walk)
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Gubbseleforsen (Gubbsele Rapids)
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Courthouse / Tourist Office
Photo: Sabina Fondelius
The courthouse is one of the grandest and most original buildings in Vilhelmina. It was designed by the architect Nils Nordén who was born in 1861 in Löderup in the county of Skåne. Nordén studied to become an architect and a master-builder. He specialized in buildings for poor relief, an area in which he was seen as a pioneer, but he also designed schools, churches, hotels and houses. The courthouse in Vilhelmina was one of his last works. He passed away the same year that the building was completed, namely 1922. The building is remarkable because it was drawn in the style of Norse architecture and it has a number of features that reflect the Viking Age. One obvious example is the dragon head at the top of the bargeboards. At the front of the building, over the main entrance, one can see finely carved battle shields.
Photo: Laila Eliasson
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One should bear in mind that the courthouse was constructed using a method that was completely new in this area at that time; namely, using planks vertically rather than horizontally. The peasants here were much more used to building houses with horizontal timber. Thanks to extremely skilful workers in the area who mastered the very complicated methods of construction, we are able to admire this stylish building today. This sort of building could never be built today; we do not have the professional know-how, we do not have sufficiently good quality timber, and it would be too expensive. Even back in 1922, it was considered extremely expensive: 222 942 Swedish crowns but that did include a lock-up and a caretaker’s cottage. The beautiful painting in the sessions-hall is the work of a Vilhelmina artist: Staffan Engebrand from Borkan.
Arresten (The Lock-up) The old caretaker’s cottage and lock-up are still standing at the back of the courthouse. Although the appearance of the building has changed over the years, one can still see signs of its original use and status. Three of the four remaining cells still have iron bars across the windows and on the protruding parts of the roof trusses, one can see the stylish original carvings, similar to those on the courthouse.
Photo: Laila Eliasson
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Inlandsbanan (Inland Railway) 16 February 1918 was an important milestone in the history of Vilhelmina. On that cold winter day, Vilhelmina’s new railway was inaugurated. A large crowd of people had gathered down at the station to listen to county governor Hagen’s inauguration speech and to see the magnificent steam engine come chugging in to the platform. The railway construction had been going on for eleven years and it was not until 1937 that it was fully completed, from Kristinehamn in the south to Gällivare in the north. One of the reasons the railway was built was that at that time it was believed that if only transport communications were improved, Norrland would be the land of the future. Norrland had enormous amounts of natural resources just waiting to be exploited: forest, water and ore. Moreover, now that almost anything could be sent up by railway, Norrland’s soil could be cultivated, partly using new methods and partly using modern agricultural tools. Unfortunately, the railway did not serve as a catalyst for the development of Norrland’s inland as one had hoped and as early as the 1960s, the first closures along the railway line took place. As far as Vilhelmina is concerned, since 1992, most of the year the inland railway is only used for goods traffic but in the summer months, it is used a lot by tourists.
Photo: Magnus Ström
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Vilhelmina’s first church
Photo: Laila Eliasson
Close to the present-day municipal hall (kommunalhus), there is a blue fence. If you open the gate and go inside, you will see some logs lying on the ground. They have been put there to mark the position and shape of Vilhelmina’s first church. The new settlers and the Sami people in the Volgsjö district had got tired of transporting their deceased relatives all the way to Åsele in order to have them buried in consecrated ground. They had therefore chosen a spot close to the Volgsjö lake which they thought would be suitable as a churchyard and they built a chapel. The snag was that on that particular spot, Daniel Danielsson from Torvsjö had started to establish a new homestead. However, when offered a certain amount of money and promised a new place in Torvsele, Daniel agreed to leave his homestead by the Volgsjö lake so that the new church could be built there. At last, in the summer of 1794, the new church was taken into use. Unfortunately, we have no pictures of it. However, it is mentioned in old sources and is described as being a red-painted cruciform church with a nearby belfry. It is believed to have been very Spartan inside. A doctor from the county of Småland, Jon Engström, writes in an account of a journey in 1834 that at first there were no benches in the church; instead “chunks and planks of wood had to be used”. He also wrote that the pulpit had been made out of some planks that had been banged together “like a tobacco box and nailed to the wall”. In December 1831, Per Olof Grönlund, who was vicar at the time, wrote that inside the church was “painted white only in the eastern section of the cross. The pulpit, altar and altar rails are painted with a blue 6 n
oil-colour with red dotted about here and there. There are no other paintings, nor any sculptures”. As regards the belfry, we know that two casted bronze bells hung there. One had been donated by county sheriff Pehr Edin; in return, he wanted that particular bell to be rung on the day he was buried. Shortly after that, he did in fact die and was buried in Åsele but no bell tolled for him at Wolgsjö chapel that day. Not long after that, the bell fell to the ground and broke which many people interpreted as being an act of revenge by the county sheriff. The bell is now on display at Vilhelmina Museum. Outside the church there was a churchyard. Today one can see small hollows in the ground where some of our new settlers and Sami people have been buried. Today there is only one cross remaining in the churchyard. It is a small iron cross with the inscription “Here lies Katarina Augusta Wilhelmina Sundelin”. She was the daughter of a priest and she died only one day old on 21 December 1836.
Hillbert Hellgren’s horseshoe Did you know that in Vilhelmina there is a special lucky horseshoe? It is located on Dalagatan, close to the ambulance entrance at the health clinic (vårdcentral). There you will see a birch that Hillbert Hellgren, a local boy from Vilhelmina, went past in a horse-drawn cart in 1912. Hillbert was about 10 years old at the time. Just there, the horse lost one of its shoes. Hillbert hung it up on one of the birch saplings, intending to fetch it later on. However, he never did so and as the birch grew, the horseshoe became embedded in the tree trunk. Now only half of the horseshoe is visible, sticking out of the trunk.
Photo: Lars-Erik Holmgren
According to local tradition, the children who lived in the area used to touch the horseshoe, close their eyes and make a wish. Maybe it’s worth a try? 7 n
Gallows Hill and the execution of Jon Larsson If you ever walk along Rönnvägen in Vilhelmina, it could be interesting to know that this is the site of one of the most macabre incidents in the history of Vilhelmina. It took place almost 200 years ago when a young man from Latikberg, Jon Larsson, ended his life under the headsman’s broad-axe. As a child, Jon did well at school but over time, he became more and more introvert and quiet. He seemed to be pondering over something. One autumn day, when his older brother Johannes was on his way home after a day mowing a bog, a gunshot was suddenly heard and a bullet came through the air, hitting Johannes in the shoulder. Because his dog didn’t bark, Johannes thought that the shot must have been fired by someone he knew. Could it have been Jon? When spring came, Jon took his younger brother Abraham with him out on the Bomsjön lake to look for diver eggs. In the middle of the lake, Jon pushed his little brother overboard. In the evening, the rest of the family wondered where Abraham was and they began searching for him everywhere but to no avail. In the end, it dawned on them that Jon had perhaps drowned him and they went out on the Bomsjön lake in Latikberg. At the deepest part of the lake, they suddenly saw a shining cross on the water and they found Abraham lying at the bottom. Jon claimed that Abraham had fallen overboard but when they took off Abraham’s clothes, they could see scratch marks on his chest. After that Jon could no longer deny his deed and he admitted that it was he who had drowned his little brother and also tried to shoot Johannes. He had also intended to kill his sister Maria. His goal was to be sole inheritor of the homestead. In the court, Jon was sentenced to death by beheading and on 6 October 1829, the punishment was implemented in front of a large crowd of spectators. Some people had climbed up into trees in order to get a better view. The broad-axe fell as the priest recited the Lord’s Prayer. Several of the people up in the trees fainted and fell to the ground as Jon’s head rolled down in front of the block. The headsman placed Jon’s head up on a pike while his body was thrown up over a wooden frame for everyone to see. In the church records, the priest wrote that on that day, Jon Larsson had been “put to death for murder and other crimes”. Today, this spot is still called Gallows Hill.
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Memorial Stone – in memory of the Finnish refugees from Kittälää Inside the old graveyard next to the Folkets Hus community centre, there stands an enormous stone. This is a gravestone in memory of the Finnish refugees who came to Vilhelmina in September 1944, from Kittälää in northern Finland. The people of Finland suffered very badly during the Second World War and in the autumn of 1944, some 48 000 Finns fled to Sweden, of which about 900 came to Vilhelmina. The majority of them, about 530, were children while the rest were women, elderly people and about a dozen men. Most of them were in such poor shape when they came, suffering from poor hygiene, that they had to be taken in for care immediately and deloused. The problem was where to house everyone; all available public buildings had to be used for the job. Some of the refugees were transported by horse and cart to some of the municipality’s village schools. The pupils who attended the “occupied” schools were give time off school. In the end, the situation became impossible and five barracks were built in the town. Today, one of Vilhelmina municipality’s preschools is located in this area and it is called Kittälää after the Finnish refugees’ hometown. Shortly after their arrival in Vilhelmina, 36 of the refugees died, most of them children between the age of 5 months and 6 years. The causes of death were mostly diphtheria or dysentery. It is these children who are buried at this spot and the stone is inscribed with their names.
Photo: Laila Eliasson
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Folkets hus (Community Centre) Vilhelmina Folkets Hus economic association was formed in 1938 and six years later, work started on the community centre building. A lack of money and building materials meant the building was not opened until 1947. Inside there was a cinema/auditorium, café, assembly room, library, offices and a flat for the manager. The flat was later turned into offices and meeting rooms. Folkets Hus was extended and renovated between 1972 and 1995. Originally, the main entrance was on Tingsgatan. In 1972, it was moved to Kyrkobergsvägen but as of 1995, the building is entered from Postgatan/Hantverksgatan, i.e. from the south. Today the building also houses a bowling hall, a swimming centre with several pools, Jacuzzis and saunas. It has many rooms and halls for many different types of meetings and conferences, suitable for 2 to 300 people. The library has been extended with a large Sami section and is also well-equipped for genealogical research. Folkets Hus hosts events all the year round. In summer, café evenings and especially barbecue evenings with live music entertainment are very popular. In a light shaft inside Folkets Hus, you can see the “Millennium Wheel” which was Vilhelmina’s contribution to “The Millennium Project” in which 11 towns in Sweden took part from 1 Jan. 1999 to 1 Jan. 2000. The heads of the project were Carina Reich and Bogdan Szyber who stated that the purpose of the project was to “identify and create the urban rituals of our time”. Inside and outside the centre, there are also two other works from the same project: Spegelsystemet (The Mirror System) and Pyramiden (The Pyramid).
Photo: Magnus Ström
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Stenmans (Café)
Photo: Magnus Ström
Stenmans café was built in 1965 after a drawing by the architect Kjell Wretling. The building is a polygon split-level house, made of concrete with large picture windows. Wretling’s aim was to design a building that would, in a tasteful way, unite the older buildings along Storgatan with the new modern buildings along Volgsjövägen. Photo: Åke Sörlin
The old Stenmans café as it was in the 1950s.
Kjell Wretling was born in 1904 in Umeå and died on Lidingö in 1998. He studied at the Institute of Technology in Stockholm and worked as a town architect in Umeå from 1935 to 1951. He also worked in a number of other places in Västerbotten, e.g. Lycksele, Vännäs, Åsele and Dorotea.
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Volgsjö School Volgsjö School was built in 1918. It was designed by Karl Nissen from Örebro, an architect who specialized in school buildings. His aim was to create pleasant, practical and healthy classrooms. The weathercock over the main entrance resembles a cock capercaillie and it was made and donated by a local tinsmith. In 1984, the school was extended with an eastward wing. The extension, made out of bricks, was given beautiful ornamentation by the artist Ann-Marie Simonsson. On 29 September 1928, Sweden’s first amateur theatrical society was formed within the school premises. The initiators were the spouses Elis and Irma Essegård. For almost two years, the society performed the radio theatre Hällebäcksgård and it also took part in some film productions, including the TV series “Nybyggarland”. Photo: Magnus Ström
Photo: Cecilia Yttergren
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The School Park The sculptures in the school park When Vilhelmina became a market town in 1947, a modern town centre was created with new buildings and asphalted streets. Also, public ornamentation was needed and so a fountain was built in the school park. In its centre, a group of bronze sculptures made by Birgit Lindgren were placed, called “Pojkarna” (The Boys) or “Avunden” (Envy). The cause of the envy is easily understood from the boys’ body language.
Photo: Cecilia Yttergren
Photo: Cecilia Yttergren
Another bronze sculpture is to be found between Volgsjö School and the Courthouse, this one being the work of Emil Näsvall. His intention was to make a sculpture of a woman picking berries but he died before the work was completed. His wife Nanni consented to a casting of another completed sculpture of a young woman called ”Maj”. In the inauguration speech in July 1966, it was said that she was “a living symbol of the youth and goahead spirit of the Vilhelmina community”. The statue came about on the initiative of a foundation formed in memory of Helge Dahlstedt. 13 n
Vilhelmina ”church town”
Photo: Magnus Ström
Vilhelmina’s “church town” began to be built in the 1840s. This was because farmers from the surrounding villages often had a long way to go in order to come to the church and they needed somewhere to spend the night when they came for weekends and church festivals. Often a group of farmers would join forces and build a communal cottage in which each family would have the right to use one or two rooms. The last church cottage was built in the middle of the 1890s. For most people, attending church weekends and festivals was a welcome break from the hard work of everyday life. As well as going to church services, there were many opportunities for people to get together with friends and relatives. Perhaps a family member had just died and there was going to be a funeral service or people could have an invitation to a wedding or a christening. Shops, market stalls and cafés were set up for the church gatherings and there people could buy showy decorations, alcoholic drinks and other things that could not be made at home on the farm. At times, there was no doubt too much drinking done during the church gatherings since this is a recurring topic in the old documents, i.e. the widespread drunkenness that took place at many of the church towns in Norrland. If there was no beer or spirits available, people would sometimes drink hair tonic and alcoholic medicaments instead.
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Between the church gatherings, the church cottages had to be locked up, this being a very strict rule. At the end of the 19th century, this regulation was waived and more and more of the cottages became permanent homes. This in turn led to business men seeing the potential of setting up permanent shops and businesses in the church town. Slowly but surely, the church town began to turn into a proper town.
The fire in 1921 Then came the fatal day when more than half of the church town burnt down to the ground. It was in the morning of 5 September 1921 when a fire started in one of the cottages west of Storgatan. In no time, the fire took hold of the walls in the old timber cottage and then it spread rapidly to the other cottages. At five o’clock in the afternoon, the whole of the church town west of Storgatan had burnt to the ground, more than 50 buildings. In the ensuing investigation, it was determined that the fire had been caused by a faulty chimney shaft.
Unknown photographer
A church weekend in Vilhelmina at the start of the 20th century.
The church town is saved In the 1960s, Vilhelmina Municipality began to buy up the old cottages in order to be able to restore them. After having been used as private homes and business premises, they now also began to be rented out as temporary accommodation. Today the church town is classified as a cultural environment of national interest. 15 n
Vilhelmina Museum Vilhelmina museum is located in the old parish hall from the 1890s. The building was designed by the craftsman P A Edman and is considered to be one of the best preserved parish halls in the county. For fifty years, the building was used for different types of meetings and it also served as a municipal hall, a school, teacher accommodation and as an approved school. Weddings and other types of festivities were also held here. In conjunction with the 100 year jubilee celebrations of “folkskola” (elementary school) in 1942, Photo: Magnus Ström the local cultural heritage society at that time gathered together a large number of old everyday items and ancient finds out in the municipality, forming an exhibition which was called “The Past – the Present – the Future”. These numerous valuable objects later became the start of a permanent museum in the parish hall which was inaugurated in the summer of 1943.
The old parish hall, now the museum, is marked with an arrow. This picture was taken by Vicar Lars Dahlstedt in the 1890s.
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Photo: Magnus Strรถm
The exhibitions now on display present the history of the district from prehistoric times to the present day, describing primarily the period of time when the new settlers and the Sami people were selfsubsistent. Two of the many prehistoric objects which deserve special mention are some glass pearls from the 8th century and a ski that is almost 2000 years old.
Komse, Sami cradle
Coffee bean roaster Photo: Cecilia Yttergren
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Photo: Cecilia Yttergren
Vilhelmina Church The church was built in the neoclassical style and was completed at the start of the 1840s. The architect was Axel Almfelt. When the church was built, every village in the parish had to contribute by doing a certain number of days’ work and providing a certain amount of building materials. For example, the village of Nästansjö donated the wrought railing, made of bog iron ore, at the main entrance. The altarpiece, a wooden relief, was made by the artist Gunnar Torhamn. The original altarpiece, painted by Marcus Blomqvist from Åsele, is still hanging behind the present one. The pulpit was also painted by Blomqvist. Inside the church, you can see at least three different types of leather used for the décor. On the altar-rails, you can see reindeer skin, sheepskin was used for the doors at the southern entrance hall, while the inner doors at the main entrance have some bearskin. The wrought-iron pelican at the top of the southern entrance hall symbolizes self-sacrifice.
Photo: Magnus Ström
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Sami Settlement / Samiesijte
Photo: Max Lundström
On the Kyrkberget hill, the Sami association, Vueltjere Duodju, has some traditional Sami buildings including a provision-shed built on posts and two different kinds of “goahti” (cone-shaped huts), one South Sami and one Forest Sami. For information about activities at the Sami settlement, contact the Tourist Office.
Sagostigen (Enchanted Path) On the Kyrkberget hill, two trolls, Tallus and Tallina, invite you to walk along the “Enchanted Path”. If you look carefully, you will see little creatures and animals peeping out from behind moss and tree trunks. The 1 km Enchanted Path is located close to the car park by the church. It starts after you have passed the Sami Settlement. Photo: Max Åke Brantholm
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Strandpromenaden (Lakeside Walk) Take a walk along the beautiful Lakeside Walk which runs along the eastern shore of the Volgsjö lake. There are benches positioned here and there along the walk where you can sit and rest and enjoy the view. If you start at the small boat harbour below Hotell Wilhelmina and follow the path northwards, towards Storuman, Photo: Magnus Ström after about 3 kilometres you will get to Lövliden where you can have something to eat, drink coffee or buy some of the delicacies on offer in Martin Bergman’s shop filled with local produce. If you choose to walk southwards instead from the harbour, after 1.6 km, you will come to the Gubbsele Rapids.
Gubbseleforsen (Rapids) Follow the Lakeside Walk 1.6 km south from the harbour and you will come to the Vojmå river’s last stretch of rapids before entering the Volgsjö lake. Here there is a wind shelter where you can grill sausages or just sit and enjoy the evening sun. If you’ve brought your fishing gear, you may be lucky enough to catch a salmon trout. Fishing permits are sold at the Tourist Office and at Grönlunds Fiske.
Photo: Magnus Ström
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